Remaking a rousing celebration of Southern womanhood,
Steel Magnolias, with an African-American cast is such a great idea, you’d have to work
hard to screw it up.

The people behind the Lifetime network remake, showing on Sunday, haven’t done so entirely, but
they’ve lost much of the heart and humor of the 1989 Herbert Ross film based on the play by Robert
Harling. At almost every turn, the new
Magnolias reminds viewers of what could have been.

Those who know the Ross film will find it impossible not to compare it with the Lifetime version
and just as impossible not to think how much better Sally Field was as M’Lynn, the Mother Courage
of the piece, than the new film’s executive producer, Queen Latifah.

If the rest of the new cast doesn’t compare well to their earlier counterparts, blame it on the
pedestrian direction. But Queen Latifah is simply not up to the emotional depth and range of the
character.

The story is set in the modern South, where Truvy’s beauty parlor serves as a place where the
women of the town let their hair down. They gossip about the men in their lives and about one
another, and no one gets away with anything. They enjoy ganging up on the town’s richest and
meanest lady, Ouiser Boudreaux (Alfre Woodard), but, at heart, they are a band of sisters.

Their lives aren’t perfect, but the women are survivors. Truvy (Jill Scott) tries to put on a
brave face about her marriage and her husband’s lack of interest in her.

And although M’Lynn is excited about the upcoming marriage of her daughter, Shelby (Condola
Rashad), she is also worried about the younger woman’s health, specifically the kidney damage
caused by diabetes. Still, she knows that her friends, including widow Clairee (Phylicia Rashad),
will provide support.

Humor was found in the 1989 film, but somehow it has been lost in translation to the Lifetime
remake. The script is virtually the same, but Kenny Leon’s direction is pedestrian: Where the film
should crackle, it ambles.

M’Lynn is the broken and ultimately resurgent heart of the story, a woman who has to face the
greatest loss that a mother could imagine, and Latifah simply can’t pull it off. She has always
been fine at playing strong, but playing shattered just isn’t in her acting vocabulary.

Steel Magnolias isn’t a disaster by any means. It has some winning moments, and the cast
members clearly have fun with their roles. In the end, though, it doesn’t connect the way it should
have. It is a missed opportunity for something much better.